In this week’s issue of The Stage:
- Alistair Smith looks at the Conservative Party’s new Arts Task Force
- Sofie Mason asks where the substantial roles for women are in modern theatre writing
- Mhora Samuel of the Theatres Trust argues that directors, producers and performers need to be closely consulted on venue design
- Our annual Summer Schools supplement tells you everything you need to know to find the course that suits your needs
- Director Tim Supple talks about his new production, an Indian-themed version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream now playing tat he Roundhouse.
- Shameless creator Paul Abbott shares his top ten tips for would-be TV writers.
- Actor John Hannah on the latest instalment of ITV’s thriller, Cold Blood.
Read on for some previews of the inside pages…
Sofie Mason, co-founder of OffWestEnd.com, argues in this week’s Insight that an absensce of substantial roles for women in theatre is symptomamtic of a lack of courage in contemporary writing:
[It has] been argued that women’s roles are tougher to write as they are more psychologically complex than men. Whether this is true or not, if drama has the power to explore the complexity and contradictions of human life, then forgetting 50% of the population will inevitably lead to a shallower exploration and we are so much the poorer for it.
The Roundhouse’s new adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream features an all-Indian cast speaking seven languages. Director Tim Supple talks to Nick Smurthwaite about the challenges he faced:
To restrict ourselves to performers who worked only in English would be to miss out on a wealth of different ways of making theatre and telling stories. India is multilingual and whatever else a Shakespeare production might do, it should seek to reflect the time and place in which it is made. Besides, the Indian theatrical traditions were naturally compelling and I found their impact on Shakespeare endlessly fascinating.
Actor John Hannah reprises the role of convicted killer Jake Osbourne in ITV’s chilling drama series, Cold Blood. Despite the dark nature of the material, Hannah insists that he’s able to leave it behind:
Do I take anything of the film home with me? No, even despite the fact that a lot of the material is extremely disturbing, and that, yes, some people have told me they are actually physically rather nauseated by the content of the films. You check it all in as you leave the set each day.
I guess that, as actors, we all have a bit of black humour within us. And police people that I’ve talked to all admit to that too. They tell me that if they didn’t, they’d be driven barmy. They have to crack the ‘bad taste’ gags to carry them through.
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